


enter if you dare the renter doesn't care

by painting



Series: c cameron miller [5]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 18:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13840815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/painting/pseuds/painting
Summary: "My building isn't up to code," Cameron's voice says through the cheap, tinny speakers in Sybil's earbuds. She presses the volume-up button on her phone so she can better tune in to his distress. "I think I'm being haunted again.""You told me your apartment was haunted last month," she reminds him, holding up the little microphone attached to the headphone wires so he can hear her more clearly, "because your heating kicked in and you thought it was too loud."





	enter if you dare the renter doesn't care

"My building isn't up to code," Cameron's voice says through the cheap, tinny speakers in Sybil's earbuds. She presses the volume-up button on her phone so she can better tune in to his distress. "I think I'm being haunted again."

Sybil kicks a pebble when she sits down on a splintering bench to wait for the bus. Absently, she picks at a piece of wood sticking out from the edge, which turns out to be a mistake because it peels right off. Whoops.

"You told me your apartment was haunted last month," she reminds him, holding up the little microphone attached to the headphone wires so he can hear her more clearly, "because your heating kicked in and you thought it was too loud."

"It was loud," reminisces Cameron. "You heard it yourself."

"Is your ghost hot this time?"

"Please take my problem seriously."

"I don't think it deserves to be taken seriously."

"Sybil. I'm in a jam."

"You're in a jam," Sybil repeats. "I don't--"

"I'm in _hot water_ ," he asserts. Sybil can't tell if he's actually upset or not, because even though he does that voice when he's really worried about something, he also loves to emulate it as a joke.

"Okay, I'll bite," Sybil says eventually. Cameron knew she would. She always does. "What's so haunted about your one-bedroom this time?"

Sybil can't see Cameron's face because they're on the phone, but as soon as he starts speaking she can practically hear his eyebrows flying up and disappearing under his hair.

"My shower curtain," he says gravely. Then he clears his throat way too loudly into his microphone, which Sybil doesn't really mind, even though most people probably would. "All of the mildew that had collected at the bottom has completely disappeared, and my--"

"Holy shit, dude, you had _spores_ growing on your shower curtain?"

"I don't think mildew creates spores. I think that's just mold."

"You still had shit growing on it! That's disgusting. That's not okay!"

"Well, um. Well, it was fine."

"Doesn't that make you sick?"

"I don't know. I feel fine."

"You _feel_ \-- Oh my god, Cameron. Jesus. Okay. This weekend? I'm getting you a new shower curtain."

"Well, now you don't need to! Now you don't need to!" Cameron's getting a little frantic, which tells Sybil there might be more to the story. "Because it's totally clean. Ah. God. You know what? I wasn't finished. I have to tell you about my kitchen counter, too. All of the breadcrumbs left out on my cutting board had been swept into mountains at the edge closest to my garbage can. Like crop circles."

Some of the pieces are starting to come together.

"So you've got a ghost that, what, cleans for you? I don't see the problem. And now you're mildew-free and probably breathing easier. It sounds like a great deal to me."

"You would think," Cameron says. "Yeah. You would think so. I thought so too. I know they always say ghosts are bad news, but I thought it might be kind of funny, I could fuck around a little, get it to write cool stuff on my ceiling or something."

"What kind of cool stuff?"

"I don't know. I didn't get that far, I just let it do its thing for a couple days. But then disaster struck."

"Disaster struck."

"Yes, a catastrophe."

"A catastrophe!"

"Like, I don't know how to say this. It's just." Cameron takes a deep breath, then sighs into the next statement. "I'm pretty sure this ghost is in love with me."

Ooh. There it is.

Sybil stills at his admission, which she has to snap out of because her bus pulls up to the curb.

"Can that happen?" she asks, her voice low as she steps up and scans her card so she can ride the five stops to her job site. "Do you talk to yourself at home?"

"You're just assuming it didn't fall in love with me because I'm a suave and attractive Romeo-Casanova-Sweetheart."

"I don't think ghosts care about that stuff."

"Do you know any ghosts?"

Sybil sits down next to one of the windows in the back. There's nobody in front of her, so she raises her voice back up to clarity to say something that she never expected to say while riding a bus to work on a sunny Thursday afternoon.

"I don't know any ghosts. Why do you think this one is in love with you?"

Nobody looks at her, although Sybil wouldn't really care if they did. She's got some interesting shit going on today.

"So, for starters? Of course I talk to myself. Being home alone is the only way I can do that without having to worry about my vocal cords turning into launching pads for a million wild and menacing cupid's arrows." Oh, poor Cameron, Sybil realizes. She sometimes forgets how much effort he puts into managing something that often slips through his control anyway. "It also wrote _hey sexy_ in thumbtack pinholes in my drywall."

Sybil sputters a bark of a laugh right into the open space of the bus, the outburst so immediate that there was really nothing she could have done about it. There was something about his delivery that she just couldn't handle. Sybil has never heard anyone say "hey sexy" so discontentedly in her life.

"God," she says, hushing herself to make up for it when she regains composure a moment later. "The real problem here is that this ghost has access to thumbtacks. Love can make you do crazy things."

"It's doing all this stuff for me, I think, like it wants to be my homemaker," Cameron continues. "My medicine cabinet was rearranged, according to size and how empty each bottle was. This ghost knows Feng Shui. This ghost is interior decorating for me. This is episode one of Extreme Haunted Home Makeover: Slutty Phantom Edition: P.S. Cameron you'd better watch yourself and be likable or you won't be called back as a recurring personality for our All-Stars season."

Sybil laughs again, but only for a second, because this is actually sort of serious.

"Are you worried about it, like, getting pissed off that you put a love spell on it from above the grave?"

"Oh my _god_ ," Cameron groans. He's always quick to switch gears. "I didn't even think of that! But I am now!"

"What? What else could you have been worried about?"

Cameron sighs again and says, " _I_ was worried about, like, you know. Now I can't bring anyone home because my clingy obsessed ghost roommate would get jealous. But your point is even worse. Oh no. Oh, that's not good."

"Let me get this straight--"

"Oh, that is so not good."

"--You weren't concerned for your safety while being haunted by a lovey-dovey, histrionic poltergeist. You were just worried that it would make it harder for you to hook up with guys?"

"I don't even know if this is a poltergeist. I don't think I know anything about ghosts. Do you?"

"No," Sybil admits. "Not enough."

She still can't believe him.

"I guess I could always go to their places," Cameron muses. "But I guess it's too late for that to even matter, because now I have another problem. And it's that whole danger thing."

"You are being useless," Sybil says. "Just stay off of Grindr or whatever for like, six hours until I get out of work. I might be able to call in a favor."

Cameron sends her seven texts after she hangs up. Five of them are quotes from the movie _Toy Story_ with select words and phrases replaced with the word "ghost", including, _ghost lightyear, you're alive!_ , and  _this town ain't big enough for the ghost of us,_ and  _there's a snake in my ghost_. The sixth text says, _i've never seen toy story,_ and the seventh one says,  _looked up toy story quotes on imdb.com._

He sends a belated eighth text as Sybil is getting off the bus a few moments later, reading, _we should watch monsters inc when you come over later. i haven't seen that one either but the blue one is kind of hot_. It signals that he's immediately moved on from the I-have-a-ghost-captivated-by-my-Siren-song issue, because he has no idea regarding when he should or should not be worried about something like this. She wonders if he knows he's unbalanced in that way.

She replies, _don't tell your landlord yet_ \-- about the haunting, not the Pixar movie marathon he's taken to arranging in lieu taking action to prevent spectral assault -- and wraps her earbuds around her phone as she prepares for her midday shift.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope no one is following me on ao3 (i'm a huge dumbass and don't know how to check) because i've edited the formatting in this story so many times that i might have broken your email alerts for good


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